As you know by now the new book “It Happened By Design” will be publicly available very soon. And in the meantime I’ve been getting people to review the book in its draft form. The third review that came in ended up being how reviewing the book provided an answer for the reader and was a God-incidence in itself. You need to read that here.

If you’re one of the contributing authors for my new book, based on this blog, called “It Happened By Design” and you haven’t yet got your permission form back to me, please get in touch as soon as possible. I need to finalise the copy so it can go to the printer.

The book based on this blog is coming out very soon, with lots of new stories not listed here. The final touches are being put in place and soon it will be sent off to be printed and published. Very exciting!

I hope you like the cover! I’m thrilled with it and graphic designer, Jodi Salisbury, has done a great job, don’t you think?

If you would like to pre-order the book, or read about the contributing authors, please do drop by the book’s website at “It Happened By Design“

It might be a small thing but what are the odds of this showing up in my Google Reader?

Let me set the scene.

I recently launched my book “Worth More Than Rubies” at Amazon.com. I set up a promotion for a 24 hour period and watched the ranking of my book go from 900,000+ up to 1,127 which was quite exciting. Sales were coming in. I discovered that Amazon has an RSS feed for the top 100 Hot New Releases for my genre, so I subscribed to it, but it only shows 1 book a day from that list of 100.

You know what’s coming don’t you? Overnight, whilst I was asleep, my book reached number 23 but when I saw it 12 hours later on the feed reader it had moved back down again so I would never have been able to witness this or even know it had happened. Why was my book showing instead of someone else’s on the feed reader? Random books are shown every day, in different positions and yet mine was the focus for that particular time the information was posted.

Only God could have orchestrated that for me otherwise I would never have known.

When I decided to start writing a children’s novel in March 2006, I knew I would need expert help with police procedures that would form a large part of the story. I Googled “Victorian Police Christian Fellowship” hoping to come up with something and found one obscure entry that talked about a Senior Sergeant who was disappointed that the Fellowship no longer existed and had started an email prayer support group for fellow Police Officers.

There was an email link and I sent off an inquiry asking the Senior Sergeant if he knew of anyone who might be willing to help. The entry on Google was almost two years old and I had no idea if the email link would still work.

Within an hour, I received an unexpected phone call. It was the Senior Sergeant – now an acting District Inspector – asking for more information.

I told him of my needs, and what I hoped to do. By the end of my phone call, I had my very own Police Liaison Officer; a Christian, who said he would be delighted to give me any help I needed. Eighteen months later, after countless emails, a few phone calls, two visits to Melbourne including one where I stayed with Paul and his family, my novel is complete.

Along the way, Paul spent twelve months in East Timor as part of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force, and I was able to write an article on his experiences as part of an assignment for a writing course I’m currently doing.

Not only did I receive help with my novel, and an important assignment, but I have made some new friends who have given me so much love and support on my journey as a writer.

Amazing to be able to look back and see that God has been working on something – even when you haven’t!

I returned home from a business workshop/seminar this morning to find a 10 min old Skype message asking if I was around for a chat about something? I Skyped back to say I’d just got in and shall we chat? And so we did a short time later.

The guy who contacted me outlined a new project he’s working on and that he saw me as someone who could possibly get involved – that he was aware of the things I’d been doing online and where my interests lay.

Now I can’t yet divulge what the project is but as we spoke two things came up that can only be God-incidences.

1. He asked me about doing copy writing for a website he’s working on – I’d just returned from a copywriting workshop! Amazing. I know I can write but learning how to refine it for clients is important and so here I was, not even home a half hour after the course and already my first job lined up!

2. He mentioned the field of possible clients he was looking at for his project (unrelated to number 1 above) and immediately a name of a very well known personality popped into mind. I mentioned who I was thinking of and the caller got real excited as this was exactly the same person he’d been talking with over the past few months. He wanted to know if I knew this person personally and I told him that the PA and I are very good friends and have been on committees together for over 10 years.

So I promised to contact the PA and put in a good word for him. Enter the third thing that happened as a result of this conversation. Turns out the PA (my friend) had been telling her boss (the well known personality) about things I’d been doing online. And then I go and contact her about the very same thing!

Talk about timing. I love when these divine connections happen and you can see God written all over it! I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next.

The place was my home, a suburb of Sydney.Â It was winter,the year was 2000.

While my city was celebrating the wonder of our first Olympic games, my life was about to change, forever.Â I was asleep, and had entered the dream world. Here I was, strolling beside the sea-side, water so blue and crystal-clear, the sand beneath my feet soft as silk and so white that it was almost blinding.

There was no other soul on the beach, but suddenly I was aware of a presence walking beside me, speaking words of comfort, reassurance. I couldn’t see the face, but I immediately recognised the person. His dress was almost as white as the sand that we walked upon, it felt like time had stopped. Just as clear as this picture was, so too the feeling of a tap on my shoulder. The kind of tapping as if someone were trying to get my attention, and I awoke.

Looking around the bedroom, I expected to wake with either my husband, or one of my children needing me… everyone lay fast asleep.

The next morning, I gathered the family, describing the dream, and the sensation of the hand on my shoulder…no one could explain so I tried to put it out of my mind.

he following day brought my answer. My mother, who had been fighting a battle with cancer, had fallen during the night…. my father found her the next morning.Â As I drove my car recklessly up the motorway to her house, I realised in an instant my dream had been a message, a warning. I will always believe that the dream along with the hand that woke me, were both letting me know… ‘Get ready’

“Side by Side” poem written by Debbie Stevens, is based upon this incident.

It was 1970 and I had flown to Hawaii to meet my husband for R&R. He had been serving in the U.S. Army, in Vietnam. We had a wonderful week there and neither of us wanted to leave. He had to return to Vietnam and I had to fly back to Tennessee.

I was flying on a special military stand-by fare. The night prior to our departure, I received a call from the airline telling me that I had been placed on a later flight, due to my original flight being oversold. “What am I going to do with all this time between you leaving and my flight time?” I cried, as I melted into his arms. I was so sad about being separated and this just added to my distress.

When I returned home on the later flight, I was stunned to see on the news that the flight I initially was scheduled to be on had crashed, killing everyone aboard! I have never questioned a flight change or delay since.

I awoke on the morning of August 2, 1977 with such intense nausea, that I barely made it to the bathroom. You can imagine my horror when upon vomiting I beheld a stream of bright, red blood! The heaving went on unabated. I could not stop it until finally, blind, I surmise by a dramatic drop in blood pressure, I felt my way to the top of the stairs and called for Danny. He found me, unconscious, on the bathroom floor, where I had felt my way back, still blind, to vomit again.

***

There was no tunnel. There was simply this lovely, soft, ever brightening light. It was like being cradled within a frosted light bulb – all white and soft and glowing, and it was as though the air was made up of music and vibrations. It was a place of teaching, a place of learning, a place… of love. Slowly, oh so slowly, I became aware of a feeling of complete acceptance. Here was love! Profound, exquisite love! I was bathed in it, enveloped in it, completely surrounded by it. I was with God, Creator, whatever name you wish to give the Supreme Being, and I was saturated with love! Finally, I understood what He meant in my earlier vision when He said, “I love you!”

To come to any kind of understanding of what I felt, one would have to go back, back, back to when they were so very young, were hungry, maybe crying. Their mother would come, pick them up, and hold them, and they went from being hungry and uncomfortable to a feeling of warmth and safety and love. That comes as close as I can get to explaining how I felt.

I had never experienced this type of love and acceptance before. I remember thinking, This is how it is! I knew it would be this way! And, I remember finally feeling whole and worthy and safe.

There is a saying that goes something like “Recipe for one happy adult: Take one child, marinate in love for approximately 16 years until ripe and juicy.” This must be what God does. We are not aware of it on this plane, but deep down, the love is there. I don’t think we could function if we felt the full force of God’s love. The glory of it would be too distracting. When I went Home, I recognized it instantly and knew that it had been there all along! Now, I knew who I was! I had my reference, my compass, my oar! I was so happy, so very, very happy.

***

It was with a great deal of reluctance, that I opened my eyes in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. I returned to this life with deep sorrow for what I had left behind. I felt lonely, bereft, robbed of my birthright. I was back in the cold, heartless world in which I had spent 24 years, without love, protection and companionship. I wept.

I felt someone holding my hand and looked up. There was Michelle, a friend of mine, who was a nurse at the hospital. She smiled, and smoothing the hair back from my face, whispered through a tear-filled voice, “We thought we had lost you. Welcome back.”

I have been truly blessed during this time.Â Recently I received a resume from a software developer I had met through LinkedIn. His start up company had just lost their funding.

I had nothing for him at the time. Two hours later, I received an email from a friend describing an open position at his company that was an excellent match for my candidate.Â (A God-incidence in itself).

I set up an interview for my candidate the following morning and received a call from my candidate about 45 minutes after he was scheduled to interview. I asked him how it went and he thought it had gone very well (everybody thinks their interview went well so I thought I’d wait and see).

He then went on to tell me that in the first few minutes of the interview he and the hiring manager discovered they had both graduated from a small Catholic high school in Minot, North Dakota. Now let me put this in perspective for readers who are not familiar with this area. Minot, North Dakota is a city of about 37,000 residents, making it the fourth largest cities in North Dakota, a state with a population of under 1,000,000. Minot is 500 miles away from Minneapolis where the client and the candidate both live. Bishop Ryan High’s average graduating class size is 50 students.

Now, I can’t tell you what the probability of this happening is, but it truly ranks as a Godincidence in my book. BTW, he was immediately scheduled for a second interview the following week.